bran crackers

There are so many things I have been thinking of writing on here recently but I haven't made the time for it. So for now I'll just record a small incident with my four-year-old for the sake of posterity. He has become fairly picky with what he eats in the past year or so. The issues are usually to do with texture or difficulty with chewing. We were at my mom's last week for a visit. When he passed over the freshly-baked vanilla muffins we were fairly surprised but not as much as when he asked to have a bran cracker. Mom had been given a package but we were having a hard time eating them. They tasted like a handful of bran directly converted to a crisp wafer. So when he asked for one I said he probably wouldn't like them but he could try. He was up for it so, amid doubt, I passed him a corner to chew on. His face lit up: "I do like them!" I couldn't help but disbelievingly reply "Really?!" To which he assured me, "Yes, yes I do like them; they taste like chicken coop!"

Nutella-face

I moustache you a question...

I normally despise puns like this but I can't think of a more fitting caption for this picture.

Dentures

I think Uncle Tom would be proud to see how his nephew is improvising play with his gift.

Where I found the latest dust-bunny

Sorry Alison.

I think we've established you shouldn't try for facial hair.

clip

Rob Brydon's description of Russell Brand from Annually Retentive--a show of which I would desire to see more.

O Simon

In an addition or continuation of the last post I would like to say that as a side-effect of my new habits I am beginning to hear Simon Amstell's voice as the constant narrator in my head. Now normally, when I read or write things or think them in my head I have no consciousness of a particular voice or accent or tone unless it puts me in mind strongly of something in a particular genre. For example, if I heard "perspicacity" I would think of it in an upper-class English accent and if I heard "you can't handle the truth" a few good men would pop into my head providing they were small enough. However now amost everything has become a joke with me. The tortured tones of irony and suppressed laughter while reading something of a serious nature has permeated the most sombre of materials and I will not even attempt to start with how much more hilarious his voice renders things that are funny to begin with. I just can't get him out of my head but that's okay.

in a cottage-cheese cottage...

a pretty pickle indeed

But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.
-from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

The Very Model of a modern Major-General

The classic aria from Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance

I am the very model of a modern Major-General;
I've information vegetable, animal and mineral:
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical,
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lit o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse...
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus;
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous:
In short in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

I know our mystic history, King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's;
I answer hard acrostics; I've a pretty taste for paradox;
I quote, in elegiacs, all the crimes of Heliogabalus,
In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous;
I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies
I know the croaking chorus from the Frogs of Aristophanes!
Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's dinafore,
And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense, Pinafore!...
Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform,
And tell you ev'ry detail of Caractacus's uniform:
In short in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

In fact when I know what is meant my "mamelon" and "ravelin",
When I can tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a javelin,
When such affairs of sorties and surprises I'm more wary at,
And when I know precisely what is meant by "commissariat",
When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery,
When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery--
In short when I've a smattering of elemental strategy--
You'll say a better major-General has never sat a gee.
For my military knowledge, tho' I'm plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;
But still in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

I couldn't stop laughing!

Molesworth

A good friend loaned me The Compleet Molesworth and I am hooked. This is not exactly a good position to be in since I have quite a stack of reading assigned from my classes that are being neglected slightly as a result. But I chalk it up to the need for some recreational reading. It also gives me a wider cultural base from which to derive my context of the culture about which I am reading. Or so I tell myself. Whatever excuse I may give I am being highly entertained with this 'journal' of a schoolboy. I wish I could include the pictures that go with the quotes here but you'll have to take my word that they are hilarious and add another dimention to the text. But even without that added advantage I think I shall quote a section or two here to give a delightful taste of what I am feasting on.

Literary Corner
A Book for the hols. 'Rob Roy' by Charles Dickens.
(Grabber & Grabber 6s.)
To judge from the first page which i happened to see by mistake this is something about a small boy who had to climb chimneys. Acktually i would hav thort this was quite super as you get black but this one seemed to be rather sorry for himself. On page 5 there is a pressed leaf and on page 77 some orange juice i spilt while the book was acting as part of a fort. There seemed to be something about some water babies or something soppy but i don't really kno. i suppose he must hav climbed the chimney to rob roy but this is only a guess.

Carob

My thoughts exactly:

Carob is a brown powder made from the pulverized fruit of a Mediterranean evergreen.
Some consider carob an adequate substitute for chocolate because it has some similar nutrients (calcium, phosphorus), and because it can, when combined with vegetable fat and sugar, be made to approximate the color and consistency of chocolate.

Of course, the same arguments can as persuasively be made in favour of dirt.

list of laughs

Having finished most of the hard part of the term (and on time too!) I find humour to be a fitting subject for a post. Yes, I took this from an e-mail but some forwards can be humourous. Enjoy!

-A lone amateur built the Ark; a large group of professionals built the Titanic.
-There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.
-You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
-Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
-Junk is something you've kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.
-Opportunities always look bigger going than coming.
-If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.
-For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
-My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.
-Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
-Don't worry about what people think, they don't do it very often.
-Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
-A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.

The Musical Bar

I recieved this as a forward in an e-mail from a musician friend some months ago. I saved it to the computer, for I found it fairly funny for a forward, but then forgot about it. However, with upcoming papers looming, I find myself in Word yet again (a place I had not frequented over the summer) and re-discovering things like the following:

A C, an E-flat, and a G go into a bar... The bartender says: "Sorry, but we don't serve minors." So the E-flat leaves, and the C and the G have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished and the G is out flat. An F comes in and tries to augment the situation, but is not sharp enough.

A D comes into the bar and heads straight for the bathroom, saying, "Excuse me. I'll just be a second." Then an A comes into the bar, but the bartender is not convinced that this relative of C is not a minor. Then the bartender notices a B-flat hiding at the end of the bar and exclaims, "Get out now. You're the seventh minor I've found in this bar tonight!"

The E-flat, not easily deflated, comes back to the bar the next night in a 3-piece suit with nicely shined shoes. The bartender (who used to have a nice corporate job until his company downsized) says, "You're looking sharp tonight, come on in! This could be a major development!"

This proves to be the case, as the E-flat takes off the suit, and everything else, and stands there au natural.

Eventually, the C sobers up, and realizes in horror that he's under a rest. The C is brought to trial, is found guilty of contributing to the diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to 10 years of DS without Coda at an upscale correctional facility. On appeal, however, the C is found innocent of any wrong-doing, even accidental, and that all accusations to the contrary are bassless.

The bartender decides, however, that since he's only had tenor so patrons, with the soprano out in the bathroom, and everything has become altoo much treble, he needs a rest, and closes the bar.

I'm surprised no one had a tonic or a root beer....

Baseball

My Grandma (a great supporter of little league and a baseball fan) has this simple explaination of the game on the spare bedroom wall (for the uninitiated).

Baseball
You have two sides: one out in the field and one in.
Each man that's on the side that's in goes out and
when he's out he comes in and the next man
goes in until he's out.
When three men are out, the side that's out comes in
and the side that's been in goes out and tries to
get those coming in out.
Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When both sides have been in and out nine times
including the not outs, that's the end of the game.

Palindromes

I think the first palindrome I heard was fittingly attributed to the first words of introduction between our first parents:

Madam, I'm Adam.

and ever since then, it seems, people have been jumping on the bandwagon.

Love or hate Napoleon, he had a great opportunity to use his captivity for greatness at that crucial moment when the line

Able was I ere I saw Elba

was appropriate.

However clever these two illustrious speakers were to come up with the right phrase at the right time, it seems even more so when we see that the phrases were spoken in good English. You ask how this can be? I ask how it can be otherwise; we have to conclude that they were originally in English since the chances of a palindrome in one language translating into another perfectly good palindrome in a completely different language are slim indeed!

I once saw writing in Hebrew that looked quite palindromic but I couldn't verify whether it actually meant anything. Besides, it is read backwards in any case so that may put it in a different category entirely. I mean one would be reading backwards forwards and forwards backwards and end up being twice as palindromic. So confusing.

This confusion aside, English is indebted to many other languages (mainly those who read forwards, however) for the use of their words. These words can make it easier in some cases for the construction of a palindrome.

To make things much easier, we should find a language that has words that either spell the same both ways (i.e. "elle") or that has words that are spelled the same as our words backwards so we might borrow words useful for palindromes. Since this language may not exist, I suggest we start it ourselves. Perhaps it could be called something like Hsilgne.

If this is too much work we can simply be satisfied with what foreign words we have to suit our purposes. Words such as toyota. A simple phrase can be constructed by adding just a few extra letters using this wonderful word as a base:

A toyota's a toyota.

And not much else can be said about that.

I am indebted to my Uncle for this last one containing two foreign words that beautifully mirror into a rather singular sentence:

go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog.

But perhaps we are getting too carried away.

More medicine

Hope your day is filled with pleasant surprises (and many laughs)!

Self-Irrigating Potatoes

My great-aunt Lois told me about this. I wonder why no one has thought of it before...

You'll never have to water your potatoes again!

How to create self-irrigating potatoes in one easy step:

Simply plant onions in with the potatoes -- as soon as the eyes appear, they'll start watering!

have a great laugh =)